SOURCE: McInnes, Edward. “Maria Magdalena and the Bürgerliches Trauerspiel.” Orbis Litterarum 28 (1973): 46-67.

In the following essay, McInnes examines the place of Maria Magdalena within the development of German drama.

Despite the sustained critical attention which Hebbel's Maria Magdalena has received over the years, its place in the development of German drama remains strangely ill-defined. Literary histories have certainly not been slow to claim that the play marks a turning-point in the growth of domestic tragedy, and several attempts have been made to define its specific historical position.¹ Yet such assessments have seldom ventured beyond the confines of received assumption. Perhaps here alone in the whole field of Hebbel criticism are the claims of the dramatist himself still allowed an unavowed authority over basic critical presuppositions. Even to this day the understanding of the historical significance of this work, of its relation to earlier conceptions of the b...